xī bēn
Also rendered: running breath (The older rendering) · xiben (Pinyin, usual in clinical writing)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
In the seventh chapter, the second thing that disease of the second yang transmits into — after wind-wasting — and the one that ends the sentence: death, beyond treatment. Breath that rushes upward and will not come back down. Later medicine made it one of the five accumulations, the lung’s accumulation; the seventh chapter only says that when it arrives, nothing more can be done.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Common English | running breath / xiben | 'Running' is old-fashioned; pinyin is usual clinically. |
| This site | rushing breath | 賁 carries both the rushing and the swelling-up; 'rushing' keeps the motion without importing the later accumulation theory. |
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